5 Common Mistakes To Avoid While Building A Customer Journey Map
Customer journey mapping, or CJM, is creating visual representation of your customer journey to the point where you want them to be. If carried out properly, it will significantly improve the customer experience.
As a process, CJM can help you to better understand your clients and their expectations. But it’s important to keep in mind that this is not the key to all doors.
In order to achieve the desired result, you need to use this process correctly. Otherwise, you are likely to lose not only time and money but also your customers.
In this article, I will tell you about five common errors when undertaking CJM.
CJM Is Your Only Weapon
There is a proverb — don't put all your eggs in one basket. The same can be said for customer journey mapping. You won’t boost your business growth by making this methodology your only instrument of choice. Instead, you should make it a cog in one big strategy machine that will lead your company to success.
Your strategy should also include processes like CJM in conjunction with other activities such as surveys, user interviews, collecting feedback and contextual inquiries. The combination of all these tools will help you achieve your goal, and also limit how often your customers contact your customer service department.
Using Unverified Sources Or Not Enough Of Them
Relying on the wrong sources, or not using enough, is another common mistake you should avoid while creating your customer journey maps. Your team will inevitably make an unreliable map if you provide it with unverified information.
This, in turn, can adversely affect your business. How? Based on your map, you will simply not offer your customers what they need and, finally, you will lose them. You should just always remember that your personas are not real people, but real people should be behind them.
Describe your real target audience, use the right sources to gather information about them, and don’t limit yourself to only one or two of them.
Remember how Dr. House said that everybody lies?
Take a customer interview, for example. No, I don't want to accuse your customers of lying but, by the time of the interview, your customer may have forgotten the nuances and won’t be able to convey all the emotions and impressions received from your product or service.
And yes, not all people want to be honest and sincere. Your customer journey map should not be based on unreliable facts. So, use as many sources as possible.
Doing Extra Work
Before you start mapping, take a close look at your business. If the path your customers take is short, with few touch points, there is no point in building a whole CJM from the ground up. Creating a map might be like letting an elephant into a china shop in this case. Turn your attention to customer journey map templates that will benefit you more than building your own map from scratch.
Using CJM For The Sake Of It
To use this process properly, you must clearly understand why you need it and what goals it should accomplish with its help. If you have no purpose, I have bad news for you — you will only waste your time and effort to draw a map.
The finished map will be buried in your desk, device, or left forgotten on the wall rather than being put to use. If you can't answer how you're going to apply your customer map and how it can benefit you, don't make it. I advise you to first create an action plan and then strictly follow it.
Blindly Following The Trend
It's a very bad idea to start mapping customer journeys because it's on hype or because other companies do it. Methods other businesses use may not always work for your business too. Even if tomorrow Elon Musk or Bill Gates tweet that customer journey mapping is cool, and your company will skyrocket using this process, this doesn't mean that you should immediately start the process.
Wrapping up
So, I’ve told you about five major mistakes to avoid when building a customer journey map. I hope these tips will help you build a useful and reliable map. Together with larger platform tools like customer experience management software, it will lead you and your business to success!
Related Read: 10 Best Customer Journey Mapping Tools